Andrew Jackson Jihad
Knife Man

The Michael Jordan of drunk driving played his final game tonight,

Emburdened by his loneliness he wanted to feel alive.

His laziness built the pyramids and his solitude was a knife,

the Michael Jordan of drunk driving played his final game tonight.

The Michael Jordan of [doing something] is a rather tired metaphor to say that someone is a phenomenon at doing it. But the Michael Jordan of drunk driving is the same Michael Jordan who in eighty-seven was phenomenal and humiliated middle school kids on the court, when suddenly at the corner a terrible accident and then he would give the speech about not getting rides from drunk people. Triple paradoxical layers of meaning that, while sneering at a naive American culture now in VHS oblivion, tell a story of apathy, laziness, loneliness, and suicide. In three verses, for a cyclical acoustic folk quatrain and mandolin twenty-two seconds long. Set in a melody that cannot be forgotten. I don't even know what rhetorical figure it might be of laziness building the pyramids, but it's the same, repeated, of the poet Mayakovsky who loved himself. With Sean Bonnette's voice that is so insecure, mediating so little self-satisfaction between the throat break and the sob in the chest and the spoken word.

The powerful punk rock vein from Can't Maintain returns, and tell me if the initial acoustic-electric one-two of The Michael Jordan of Drunk Driving-The Gift of The Magi 2: The Return of The Magi (a precious title) isn't an adrenaline shot to the heart. The one-two is also conceptual, because if in Michael Jordan there's a death, in Magi there's a resurrection and reincarnation as a Jedi (I used to be a dead guy, now I'm a fuckin' Jedi), with an accompanying brainstorming of genius and resentment towards

• the people: people are just fuckin' mean;
• God: so fuck God anyway, God is obsolete;
• science: It's a miracle of science all this betrayal and violence;
• the tapeworm: just like a stupid fuckin' tapeworm;
• all of you: all you fuckers that I hate;
• some random guy: We gotta get him in the van, well what if he resists? Just kick him in the back of the fucking head and put him in the back of the fucking van;
• plastic surgery: you sold your soul to buy some tits and I sold my soul to grow a dick.

But it all can be summed up with If God doesn't like ugly, then God doesn't like anybody. And when I say all, I really mean everything in general. This in two minutes of song. By the way, let me say that the mandolin on electric punk fits like spaghetti and meatballs on a pizza.

In American Tune there's the usual sarcasm on bourgeois-republican straight whites, which might be a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but it's right.

Back Pack is a heart-wrenching splatter, which is never easy. Instead, Distance is that thing we all felt when the beloved one was on Erasmus, in Ethiopia doing civil service, or doing an internship. The straightforward punk form perhaps alleviates a bit that pathetic, tearful, and very unmanly feeling that only absence can make you feel, but Bonnette says this: and it's harder to be yourself than it is to be anybody else. I wish that I was someone closer to you. To remind us that there's no remedy to patheticism, when you have it as a vocation.

Moreover, halfway through the song Bonnette does something touching, which would be a disaster if done in blues, jazz, metal, and prog: he apologizes for the solo. Such a simple gesture, yet of extreme humanity. Never has a Petrucci or a Van Halen been heard saying "sorry" after droning on for ten minutes. This, by the way, is short and cute.

Fucc the Devil is acoustic, cryptic, possibly arranged with sampled choirs that resemble a kazoo with tremolo and which sound good nonetheless, an unforgettable vocal line, unforgettable metaphors like the one about fucking the devil's mouth, a reference to Brotha Lynch in the title that made me discover the existence of a horrorcore rap scene. How had I not known until now.

Hate Rain on Me, just for the image of wanting a bullet big enough to kill the sun, when you're just fed up with summer songs. If You Love in Your Heart for the melody and because it's lo-fi. No One because it talks about human kennels and reveals a Bonnette capable of social criticism, collectivist spirit, and assistentialism, under that misanthropic curtain that can't hold for long without becoming a caricature. Too sensitive and brilliant, Bonnette, to become a caricature of I hate everything and everyone, you're better off. Sad Songs because when his mentor mistakenly calls him Steve, it's always very funny.

Zombie by the Cranberries by Andrew Jackson Jihad even just for the title and because it's not actually a cover of the Cranberries' Zombie. Which is also the worst song ever recorded. Actually, it's a return to the furious acoustic finger strumming of classic Andrew Jackson Jihad folk, and once again reveals a charitable spirit well beyond the loose change given to the unfortunate and the cigarettes given to moochers. ***SPOILER*** At a certain point, the song becomes When The Saints Go Marching In: I've never understood why, but it kills me every time.

The inspiration, the atmosphere and the falsetto, the Xanax, the mishaps, the strummings and the socialism of Woody Guthrie, the fear of growing up, the melancholy and the drama of living, the Salad glove; managing to never be rhetorical, always pathetic, evidently sincere. People II 2: Still Peoplin' is one of those clear demonstrations that no one writes like Sean Bonnette.

Sorry Bro and Skate Park are two punk slaps towards the grand finale, but especially Skate Park: time is measured in Minutemen songs (which by the way, you can also hear a bit of it, in the slightly country-dancehall riff, in the meticulous bassism), improvements are measured in broken bones and pain. I found a photo of Sean Bonnette skateboarding, as a kid, with a Morrissey t-shirt.

Free Bird will sing to you all the times you thought you had to feel happy, free, and accomplished, for everything or for something, but punctually you couldn't and didn't understand why. It's also the most melancholic one-two-three/one-two-three you've ever heard.

Big Bird is a masterpiece for too many reasons. Just voice:

I'm afraid of the way that I live my life, I'm afraid of the way I don't

I'm afraid of the things that I wanna do but I won't.

I'm afraid of God, I'm afraid to believe

And I'm afraid of all the loved ones that I've made leave,

I'm afraid that my dog doesn't love me anymore.

Then everything comes in, a sort of digital orchestration, big keyboards, fuzz everywhere, bass drum. The sudden slap of musical epic that perfectly adheres to the drama of being a not-at-all epic, very ordinary man. Just a bit more sensitive than average. One who tears open his chest and sings, with the most beautiful voice he can muster, his most naive, childlike anxieties, from memento mori to fear of abandonment and loneliness. And he doesn't renounce anything, and he feels the weight of his roots and the judgment of others, in a world that comes out as an existential hell, yet without the advantage of immortality. But the big red bird, Sean Bonnette's Phoenix; the phoenix that lives beneath the city so that it can burn and then be reborn and not care about the torments, the worries, and the judgments of mortals.